Project 2013 Timeline View

Making the most of Microsoft Project 2013's presentation capabilities with OnePager Pro

If you've ever been asked to present a project schedule to a client, executive, or team member, you know that it can be a tedious and time-consuming process. This article offers a look at the timeline view in Microsoft Project 2013 and then presents methods of expanding the timeline view's capabilities even further with OnePager Pro from Chronicle Graphics.

Project 2013's timeline view gives project managers and schedulers a way to create basic project presentations using the data they already have in Microsoft Project. Getting started with the timeline view is simple in Project 2013: just right-click on any tasks you want to include in your presentation and select Add to Timeline.

Microsoft Project 2013 will then create a timeline view that looks something like this, which you can access by navigating to the View tab, clicking on Other Views, and then selecting the Timeline option:

From here, you can make some basic edits to your timeline, just like you would in PowerPoint

Manually change fonts and colors

Rename tasks

Reposition tasks vertically on the page

After you've finished editing, you can copy and paste your timeline view into a PowerPoint presentation or an e-mail, or you can save it as an image file for future use.

Enhancing your Timeline View with OnePager Pro

OnePager Pro, a Microsoft Project add-in from Chronicle Graphics, takes the timeline view much further by letting you build graphs that are rich with vital data and show the changes that occur from week to week.

OnePager Pro lives on the Add-Ins tab of Microsoft Project 2013, and can be launched with a simple button click. Your project presentation can show as many or as few tasks as you want--just use any flag field to indicate which ones:

Once launched, OnePager Pro lets you easily emphasize the most important parts of your schedule:

OnePager Pro is a great way to extend the capabilities of Microsoft Project 2013's timeline view and create professional project presentations with ease. If you haven't yet upgraded to Microsoft Project 2013, you will be pleased to know that OnePager Pro is also compatible with Microsoft Project 2002, 2003, 2007 and 2010.